Statistics on farm attacks and murders: Africa Check

FACTSHEET: Statistics on farm attacks & murders in SA

Researched by Kate Wilkinson

Violent attacks on people living and working on farms in South Africa frequently make local and international headlines. This factsheet breaks down the available statistics and explores its limitations.

Definitions

What

The terms “farm attack” and “farm murders” are popularly used to refer to “certain crimes committed on farms and smallholdings”, the South African Police Services’ head of communication and liaison, major-general Sally de Beer, told Africa Check.

The official definition was formally introduced in 1997/98 and is contained in the police’s 2011 Rural Safety Strategy:

However, violence related to “domestic violence or liquor abuse, or resulting from commonplace social interaction between people” are not included under farm attacks.

There is no official crime category called “farm attack” or “farm murder”, though. The crimes mentioned in the definition – such as murder, rape and assault – are recorded by the police station investigating it.

Police stations are then expected to report incidents meeting the definition listed to head office for inclusion on a separate, stand-alone database, De Beer explained.

Where

A property needs to be involved in agriculture for an attack or murder to be flagged as an act “of violence against persons on farms and smallholdings”, the police’s Rural Safety Strategy states.

A farm is defined as an “area of land and its buildings used for agricultural and livestock purposes, including cattle posts and rural villages where subsistence farming takes place”.

A smallholding is an “agricultural holding that is smaller than a farm”. Smallholdings “where no agricultural activities take place” or those that are “predominantly residential” are excluded from the definition.

Sometimes attacks and murders are reported as farm attacks and murders by the media when they do not meet the police’s definition. For example, the murder of two people at a Nottingham Road estate in KwaZulu-Natal in early 2017 was reported in the press as a farm murder. However, the police told Africa Check that it was not recorded as a farm murder because the crime took place on a housing estate and there were no agriculture activities on the property.

Available statistics

1991-1997

A number of agricultural organisations did, however. The South African Agricultural Union (now Agri SA) registered 677 murders and 3,065 attacks between 1991 and 1997.

The union “got its information primarily, though not exclusively, from local agricultural societies, and the likelihood is that the emphasis might have fallen on commercial farmers, rather than on, for example, smallholders not affiliated to the agricultural societies”, a 2003 committee of inquiry into farm attacks relayed.

The committee of inquiry was appointed by the commissioner of police in 2001 to “inquire into the ongoing spate of attacks on farms, which include violent criminal acts such as murder, robbery, rape, etcetera to determine the motives and factors behind these attacks and to make recommendations on their findings”.

Because of the emphasis on commercial farms, the committee doubted if “all attacks on other farm residents, which may now qualify as a farm attack in terms of the definition, would have been included in their statistics”.

Farm attacks & murders recorded by the South African Agricultural Union

Note: The accuracy of these statistics was questioned by the 2003 committee of inquiry into farm attacks.

1997-2001

In 1997, the police’s Crime Information Analysis Centre (CIAC) began collecting data on farm attacks, but told the 2003 committee of inquiry that it did not believe that every crime was being recorded.

In 1998, farm attacks and murders were made a priority crime with its own priority committee – like other priority crimes such as gang violence, taxi violence and cash-in-transit robberies. The police’s National Operational Coordinating Committee began collecting statistics of their own.

The 2003 committee of inquiry into farm attacks concluded that none of the statistics collected between 1991 to 2001 were completely accurate and should be viewed and interpreted with caution.

2002-present

The South African police collected and released statistics on farm attacks and murders until 2006/07 but did not release statistics again until 2010/11. The latest police figures for 2016/17 show that there were 638 attacks on smallholdings and farms, with 74 people murdered.

De Beer told Africa Check that “the database is a ‘live’ system, meaning that the statistics derived from it are subject to change if new information on cases emerges. The database is not primarily intended as a source of statistics, but as an operational tool.”

Acts of violence on farms & smallholdings in South Africa recorded by the police

Note: The South Africa police did not release statistics between 2007/08 and 2009/10.

Privately collected statistics

A number of private organisations and agricultural trade unions collect and publish their own statistics on farm murders and attacks. When citing and interpreting these statistics it is important to check the definition being used to identify incidences. They may differ from the official statistics released by the police.

The institute’s report notes that their statistics were collected by monitoring traditional and social media. They also rely on security networks and victims to directly report attacks.

Author of the report and researcher at the institute, Lorraine Claasen, told Africa Check that they record incidences that occur on residential smallholdings and rural plots, which differs from the police’s definition.

Transvaal Agricultural Union

The union’s assistant general manager, Chris van Zyl, provided Africa Check with farm attack and murder statistics they had collected since 1990. He told Africa Check that they recorded incidents as defined by the police’s Rural Safety Strategy – that being, there have to be agricultural operations on the property.

The statistics, however, were collected by calendar year – not financial year – which makes comparisons with police statistics difficult. The union is in the process of converting them to correspond to the police’s financial year. So far they have converted 2012/13 to 2016/17.

Farm attacks & murders recorded by the Transvaal Agricultural Union

They also provided a breakdown of whether victims were farmers, family, workers or visitors. Van Zyl said that the farmers listed as murdered could be commercial farmers or farmers from non-commercial farms and smallholdings.

Who are the victims of farm attacks?

Race

“The statistics are not kept by race,” De Beer told Africa Check, “as race is not necessarily mentioned in the incident reports received from the stations.”

The last analysis of farm attack victims by race was conducted in the early 2000s. In 2001, the police’s Crime Information Analysis Centre revealed that of the 1,398 people attacked on farms, 61.6% were white, 33.3% were black, 4.4% were Asian and 0.7% were listed as “other”.

This data is now more than 15 years old and should not be assumed to be representative of the current situation.

Status

Similarly, De Beer said that the police do not collect information on the status of the victims of farm attacks – meaning whether they were farmers, family members, or workers, amongst others.

The 2001 analysis by the Crime Information Analysis Centre found that 69.7% of the victims were farmers or their family members, 29.5% were workers or their family members and 0.9% were visitors.

Of the 1,398 victims, 59.2% were male and 40.8% were female.

The problem with farm murder rate calculations

Two figures are needed to calculate a crime rate: the number of cases and the population affected.

The police’s latest statistics show that there were 74 farm murders in 2016/17.

According to the official definition, the victims could include people “residing on, working on or visiting farms and smallholdings”. Experts say that estimating this total population is difficult, if not impossible.

“It may be problematic to use an estimate of all people living on farms depending on what data is used for murders and attacks,” Gareth Newham, head of the crime and justice programme at the Institute for Security Studies, told Africa Check.

“It is likely that many of the figures for farm attacks and murders on farms collected by organised agricultural or the SAPS for that matter, would not contain all the attacks or murders of non-farmers.”

Until an accurate estimate of the number of people “residing on, working on or visiting farms and smallholdings” is released, it will not be possible to calculate a farm murder rate.

(Note: Read our analysis for a detailed explanation of the problems associated with calculating the farm murder rate.)

Is there a political agenda behind the attacks?

The 2003 committee of inquiry into farm attacks investigated 3,544 cases recorded by National Operational Coordinating Committee between 1998 and 2001 to determine the motives behind the farm attacks.

The committee’s report acknowledged that “obviously, more than one factor may motivate a farm attack or cause an attacker to select a specific farm… therefore [the committee] tried to identify the cases where the apparent primary or main motive was either robbery, intimidation, political, racial or labour related”.

The committee was able to identify a clear motive in 2,644 cases. This data is, however, over 15 years old and should not be assumed to be representative of the current situation.